This Burger King PSA Tackles Youth Bullying With a Powerful Social Experiment

Would you rather stand up for a damaged meal or a damaged child? According to Burger King, most would choose the former.

The fast food giant rolled out a public service announcement Tuesday in honor of National Bullying Prevention Month that uses a clever social experiment to demonstrate how people often refuse to speak out against bullies. As one child says in the video, “It’s just easier to do nothing.”

To prove that point, Burger King “bullied” a high school junior and a Whopper Junior in one of its locations to see which act received more complaints. For the high schooler, the company hired actors to play the roles of bully and victim in the midst of a busy store. For the Whopper, Burger King simply had its employees smash them into pieces in the vein of punching a student before wrapping them up and handing them out as orders to customers.

The results claim that a staggering 95% of customers reported the “bullied” Whopper Jr, whereas just 12% stood up for the high school student being bullied.

The PSA did have somewhat of a happy ending, though, as several customers approached the bullied teenagers and offered to sit by them or tell off their aggressors.